Springs are drying up
Now more than ever, it is important for businesses (and humans!) to understand their impact on other people as well as the planet in everything they do. The members of Mayamam Weavers weaving cooperative live and work in Cajola, a community of about 18,000 people in the western highlands of Guatemala. The name Cajola comes from two Maya words that mean “son of water,” and was named for the many springs arising in the mountains and for the abundance of water. For many years, residents have been accustomed to going into the surrounding mountains to cut down trees to use for firewood for their cooking stoves. Over time, the forest has been drastically thinned out. With fewer trees, the springs have also slowed to a trickle and even begun to disappear. Not only does this mean less water for drinking, bathing, and washing, it also negatively impacts the habitat of the local birds and small animals.
Taking action
Maya Mam Weavers cooperative is part of a community improvement group, Grupo Cajola, that works to develop programs in their area to provide better access to health and education as well as a safe environment. One of their many projects is reforestation and we are excited to collaborate with them on this vital on-going project. We jump-started our collaboration with a donation of 1000 saplings. The members of the weaving cooperative joined families from the preschool and scholarship students at a local nursery to pick up the tree saplings. Armed with picnic lunches and the saplings, together they headed off to the mountains and spent the day planting cypress, alder and white pines, all native species in this area. Everyone is looking forward to returning soon to check on the progress of the saplings. In the meantime, we are excited to announce that for every order placed on our website, we will donate a sapling to be planted in Cajola.
Join us
How can you help? Want to do more? Then feel free to add more saplings to your cart and we will make sure they are planted next spring. Together we can make a difference!
Check out our video highlighting a past sapling planting event that we participated in here.
Comments
Rachel Biel
What a fantastic effort! At the same time, the Amazon is burning and the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is offering up its forests in huge parcels to oil companies. Disastrous! Public pressure must stop them. So, seeing your efforts and others who are doing similar things in their areas brings a lot of hope. The Great Green Wall of Africa is another huge inspiration as they are pushing back the Sahara! This effort started several years ago, all across Africa and it’s making a huge difference. Animals are coming back and there is micro-climate change happening. https://www.greatgreenwall.org/
August 20, 2022
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